The Death of Comedy?

Townhall.com ^ | February 12, 2017 | Bruce Bialosky

[Iron Munro]

No one is THAT old ...

THE SUPER BASS-O-MATIC

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/bassomatic/n8631?snl=1

[IronJack]

Oh, well, suuuurrrrre ... if you go back to the Ackroyd/Belushi days ... Back to the days of steam-powered TV ...

[FreedomGuru]

One of my favorite Bob Hope bits and it’s true also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JvPeGg55zc

[Despot of the Delta]

It pretty much died with Sam Kinison

[southern rock]

Are you recommending the Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump?

All the Comedy Central roasts are great. Roast Battle is a show where roast comics square off against each other. It is very very funny

[HotKat]

I'm so old, I remember Jack Benny. I'm 39. 😉

[dfwgator]

I saw what you did there.

[Boogieman]

Eddie Murphy stopped doing “blue” humor a long time ago, when he wanted his kids to be able to watch his movies and stuff. Since that was about 90% of his stand-up act, I don’t think he had anything left to put a show together with.

Which is a shame, since Eddie Murphy using profanity is somehow about 10 times funnier than Eddie Murphy not using profanity.

[ichabod1]

I watched a few old episodes of All In The Family and no, it could not be televised today. All ethnic humor.

[Kaslin]

So do I, and those comedians were really funny.

[Boogieman]

You don’t find a lot of SNL clips on youtube because Hulu owns all the rights and forces youtube to take them down.

For a lot of clips, you have to search dailymotion for pirate versions:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbbou1_jim-belushi-as-a-welding-dancer_shortfilms

[hoagy62]

Comedy dead? I think not.

Look up Tim Hawkins. Also try Brad Stine.

[Iron Munro]

Back to the days of steam-powered TV ...

Ours had enough vacuum tubes to keep the living room toasty on a cold day.

[Boogieman]

My favorite was always the "Mainway Toys" skit:

[KC_Conspirator]

Yes, Lewis Black is an unfunny leftist, just like the rest of them.

[Gaffer]

His hatred for Bush was unmistakable. His hatred for Republicans and conservatives is equally vile.

[Boogieman]

There is still shared culture, but it comes in the form of “memes” nowadays. If something is funny enough, it will get spread around to just about everybody. It’s a more democratic way of sharing culture, but it seems the process limits what is shared to what will please the shortest attention span crowd.

[left that other site]

Comedy in Ruins

Many of the aforementioned Classic Comedians got their start in the "Borscht Belt", which was their name for the Catskill Resort Circuit. At one time these mostly Jewish establishments had huge ballrooms and great floor shows and always a comic featured. This was a Jewish tradition going all the way back to Medieval Days..The "Story-Teller", Funny Man, and Sage all rolled into one. Myron Cohen was perhaps the most traditional of this type of Comic, but Mort Sahl, Jackie Mason, Milton Berle, made the transition to television easily because they were used to handling large audiences, and had been honing their craft for years. Jerry Seinfeld and Gary Shandling(RIP 2016) were very much cast in the mold of these Classic Comedians.

Along with the "Death of Comedy" came the death of these resort properties. Google "Ruins of Catskill Resorts Images", and you will be met with pages and pages of pictures that look like a bomb exploded in Upstate New York.

While it is a good thing that Jewish People no longer have to establish their own places to vacation, as they are no longer banned from other resorts, it is kind of sad that this world no longer exists. It was a huge part of American Culture which is rapidly disappearing into a morass of Political Correctness and "Newspeak".

[Gaffer]

I think every copy of that show should be rounded up and put to death, slowly. If only because of Gloria and Meathead.

[Ditter]

I have watched SNL since their beginning and it was so funny. Last night a rerun from 1991 was on and I laughed my self silly. I still watch every Saturday night, hoping it will be funny again. But it rarely is........